Hopes high for faster building consents
Developer waits 13 months for tick on social housing
ATauranga developer has slammed delays after waiting more than a year for building consent for 48 desperately needed social housing homes in Greerton and hopes a review of the system will help speed the process up.
Wallace Development national manager Tyler Tabak said while the 13-month process to get consent was frustrating for the company, its true impact would be felt by those forced to live in cars or other marginal situations while desperately waiting for a home.
“For people who are living in their cars and living in tents or living under tarpaulins around the city, it is a massive difference.
“It costs us time and it costs us money but we are not the ones who are sitting in a car or under a tarpaulin in a garden somewhere waiting for somewhere to live. That is how we look at it.
“The reality of it is we can all go home while people are still on the streets because we haven’t been able to get started.”
Wallace hopes a review of the building consent system, announced by Housing and Construction Minister Megan Woods earlier this week, would help modernise the procedure.
Woods said the review would look at the current system that was established in 1991 when many new buildings were detached, single-storey and timber-framed.
The system needed to evolve, she said.
”A better building consent system will support our Government’s wider goals to transform the housing market, unlock productivity growth, stimulate urban development where it is needed, and make homes more affordable for all.”
Classic Builders operations general manager Rowan Mckeany said its average consent time in Tauranga was 10 weeks, six weeks over the standard 20 working days.
“Some of our consents are being held up by the city’s infrastructure delays, resulting in costs exceeding hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As you can imagine, this makes a substantial difference to the bottom line.”
If building consents were delayed it impacted a multitude of people, Mckeany said.
“It slows the building programme, impacting our staff, suppliers and tradespeople, and it pushes out the completion date meaning our clients have to continue paying for alternative accommodation for longer.
“Of course, delays also impact building costs. Our building rates have increased by 6 per cent so far this year and delayed consents can mean the client’s build price is increasing.”
Mckeany said the consenting process had gradually worsened year on year and “we welcome any progress to improve things”.
City Council building services manager Steve Pearce said the council had issued more than 2500 consents in the past 12 months, totalling a value of nearly $1 billion.
“The construction industry in the Bay of Plenty and throughout New Zealand has been under enormous pressure for the last few years. The volume of residential building consents nationwide broke a long-standing 47-year record in 2021.”
He said that coupled with the increased demand for housing, the construction industry has desperately tried to attract and retain suitably qualified staff while also battling material supply shortages.
Record volumes of building consent applications last year meant there had been challenges meeting
normal timeframes and the council was open about that.
The council had taken several steps to address the situation, including taking on 10 new staff this year, alongside contract staff, to deal with a backlog of consents.
”As a result, consent timeframes are improving significantly.”
In the past 12 months, consents had taken an average of 43 elapsed days and 22.6 statutory days.
“Complex projects typically require greater input from specialist engineers and designers, which we will often require to be peerreviewed to a high standard. Unfortunately, not all applications are of a high quality, and some have a significant number of questions asked by our team before they can be approved, and these ones will clearly take longer.”
Master Builders Association national vice-president and owner of Tauranga-based Calley Homes,
Johnny Calley, said the organisation was pleased with the minister’s announcement and the intent to make positive change within the consenting system.
“Master Builders has been working closely with MBIE on the first principles review and will continue to do so as the formal review continues. However, we do understand it will take considerable time to work through the full process so are keen to continue to assist MBIE and find some quick gains that already exist within the existing system.”
Classic Builders Lakes District owner Paul Taylor said he supported any moves to make the consent process faster and easier. He said his company had no problems getting consent for its homes but it understood the importance of getting it right the first time. “The quality of information going in is the quality of information coming out.” Taylor said the firm had experienced good sales in the last couple of months and believed that was due to fixed price contracts and being able to offer 0 per cent deposits on house and land packages in Rotorua and Taupo¯ areas.
Building consent figures from the Rotorua Lakes Council from the 2021/22 financial year to the end of June show it issued 1172 consents valued at $279 million. In the 2021/22 financial year it issued 1223 consents valued at $213m.
Rotorua Lakes Council district development deputy chief executive Jean-paul Gaston said the city needs thousands more homes of all types to address its current critical housing shortage and thousands more in the medium to long term to meet expected future demand.
”We would be keen to see anything that will improve processes to enable more homes to be built as quickly, effectively and efficiently as possible while also addressing affordability.”
● Submissions on the consultation to review and modernise the building consent system close on September 4.